Gamification Learning

Thoughts

Just realized that I’m quite confused about Gamification. It seems so chaotic to me. I’m looking at it as random trial and error. No clue what does what.

Have to understand it on a deeper level.

Step-by-step plan

How do you know you have a clear step-by-step plan? You should have step one, step two, step three, etc. for your plan, just like Harry Potter in HPMOR.

Fun Failure and Reinforcement

Hypothesis: Fun failure reinforces your belief that you’re powerful. Timid failure doesn’t.

Crash and burn in a racing game - you feel like something happens when you try. So try again.

Don’t see any visible results - you feel like nothing happens when you try. So why try?

Deadline

Hypothesis: Clear goal with deadline will focus your attention.

For example, when on the road, “get to the 25km marker!”. No random thoughts, no slowing down, no drinking water. You can do all of that once you get there. It will eliminate distractions and simplify your plans (because you can throw away all options that do not lead to your goal).

Reading in Reverse Order

Observation: I sometimes read long to-do lists in reverse order. I find it easier that way.

Is that just an idiosyncrasy?

Hypothesis: In both cases, my eyes are on the top of the screen reading the first line. In reverse order, the rest of the screen has stuff I’ve already understood and handled. No worries there. In normal order, however, the rest of the screen has stuff I haven’t covered yet. So I feel a bit overwhelmed by the details.

Expectancy

Observation: Level 51 guy doing a level 20 task - bored.

Hypothesis: Your tasks must grow more challenging. Or you’ll get bored.

Corollary: You can’t have the same goal after two weeks. You’ll get bored.

Observation: Gamification with quadratically growing XP targets does this automatically.

Deadlines create Urgency

Observation: Grad school. ’nuff said.

(Works against you when you’re writing your thesis.)